I’ve always wished to be a more creative  person.  I can think of a hundred ways to adapt an idea, but the idea is nearly always someone else’s brainchild.  It always amazes me what a creative mind can think of, especially when I see art or listen to music.

Today, one of my Facebook friends posted a video of some unique sculptures.  I only check Facebook occasionally, so I suppose it’s making the rounds, but it was new to me.  My favorite of these amazing sculptures was the lady holding onto the world as she blows away from it.

I went online to see what I could find out about the sculptures and quickly found that there are several websites related to the topic.  Each has a few different sculptures in its gallery.  I especially like the “Mustangs” in Texas, . . .

. . . the kids jumping into the river in Singapore, . . .

. . . the “Break Through” people in Philadelphia, . . .

. . . and the tripping man in Brussels.

Last summer, Ted and I saw the “Shoes on the Danube” sculpture in Budapest . . .

. . . and “A Man at Work”  in Bratislava.

We’re surprised we didn’t see the “Unknown Official” in Reykjavik earlier this month.  It’s a small city and we had a pretty extensive two-day tour.  Maybe next time.

Yes, we had adventures from the first day to the last day of our vacation.  We chose to keep a positive attitude and to call the events “adventures” instead of asking “What else can go wrong?”

The first leg of our journey was our flight from St. Louis to Atlanta (June 27).  It’s summer, so afternoon thunderstorms are not unusual.  Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and Alabama were getting hit hard, so we had to fly due south along the Mississippi River until we passed the storms, then turn east to reach Atlanta instead of taking the diagonal.  This added 30-40 minutes to our flight time, but we had no problem catching our connecting flight to London.

Paris was a very “adventurous” city for us.  On Bastille Day (July 14), security was so tight that we needed a police escort to return to our hotel.   Twice we had to wait on the sidewalk before continuing on our sightseeing way.  One time we had the “opportunity” to observe a march for racial equality in Paris; the other time we watched hundreds of Scandinavian bicyclists pass and exchanged conjectures about the riders with other bystanders (July 16).  Then there was the scary cab ride from our hotel to Charles DeGaulle Airport (July 17).  As we were in the process of checking in at the airport, we were informed that we had to evacuate that area of the terminal.  Someone had left untended luggage in the area.  No bombs exploded.

When we arrived in Stockholm (July 17), we went to our pick-up point and discovered our name was not on the transfer list to be taken to the ship.  They took us anyway and said everything could be straightened out after we were onboard.  No problem–our documents proved our name should have been included.  The same thing happened when we were arranging the shuttle pickup from Bergen to Reykjavik.  We showed our documents again and all worked out well.  An adventure, not a calamity, right?

When we were in St. Petersburg, we temporarily lost our tour group in the morning of the first day (July 20).  At the end of the second day (July 21), high winds delayed our hydrofoil boarding and our return to the ship.  The result was a late departure from the port, but the ship waited for all of us.  No big deal, right?

We had another late departure from Berlin (July 25) because the train arrived late and all but eleven passengers from the ship were onboard the train for the various excursions of the day.  The “welcome back” event when we finally arrived at the ship was so heartwarming, it might nullify the “adventure” status of the late arrival.

In Flåm (July 29), we were unable to take our much-anticipated “Norway in a Nutshell” railway excursion because of mud slides from a storm the previous night.  We saw one of the most beautiful fjords in the world instead.

Flying from Bergen to Stavanger (July 31), I had an attack of claustrophobia in my tiny little personal airplane space.  We changed seats.

When it was time to come home (August 2), Ted’s boarding pass printed very nicely, but mine didn’t.  For some reason, “government regulations” required that I print my boarding pass at the airport.  It printed fine at the airport

After only a few hours of sleep, we were up at 4:30 am for the 5:00 am shuttle to catch our 10:30 am flight home (August 3).  Just before boarding, eleven other passengers and I were informed that we were randomly selected for an additional deep security check.  Our flight was already delayed for two hours, and there was another delay waiting for some passengers.  The cabin doors on the plane were being closed before Ted–and about 100 other passengers–got on.  Everyone was onboard before takeoff–at 1:00 pm.

The fuel pump on our car died on our way home from dinner.  We had it replaced with a new one that works fine.

Everything always turned out well, but it seems to be true that you have to be prepared to go with the flow.  I would do it all again and I know Ted would too–even with the “adventures.”

I’m finally caught up with recording our awesome northern European vacation in this blog, but there are still some thoughts and events I want to remember when I look back on these entries.  (Any regular readers?  Maybe you want to scroll backwards to read the formerly missing entries.)  To any grammar nerds reading my posts, I think I’ve corrected all (most?) of the mistakes I made.  If you found one, go back to see if I caught it.  If it bothers you, let me know and I’ll fix it.  After all, I’m a grammar nerd too.  And maybe a little bit of a perfectionist.  Maybe.

Every time I went to the laundry on the ship (two or three times, but three trips each time–load washer, load dryer, empty dryer), there was at least one man ironing.  I never knew so many men ironed their own clothes.  Ted does, because I hate ironing and, many years ago, he got tired of waiting for me to get around to it.

In downtown London, at least one car in five must be a Prius; in Denmark, Teslas were easy to find on the streets.

It was odd to see kids wearing Mickey Mouse ears in Paris until we remembered there’s a Disneyland in Paris.

On our coach trip in Britain, our tour guide told us that by the time we went home, we’d all qualify for a degree in operating plumbing systems.  She was right!  I had no idea there were so many creative ways to turn on a faucet or to direct the bathtub faucet water to the shower head.

It’s not unusual for men and women to share restrooms (toilets or toilettes) in Europe.  This isn’t as personal as it sounds.  Most restrooms have stall-size “rooms” with walls to the ceiling and the floor, so privacy is complete.  There is usually a male or female icon on the door (I assume the difference is the urinal) and you choose the appropriate one.  Then you wash your hands in a general area with multiple sinks.  In practice, it’s fine, but it felt a little weird for both Ted and me to go into the same area together.  It is also not unusual to have to pay anywhere from 20-70 cents/pence/whatever to use a public toilet.  In England, it cost 20 pence.  Our tour guide described it as “20p to pee.”  We always kept change in our jacket pockets.

Good news:  While we were away, we missed six weeks of election phone calls, six weeks of election advertising, and both political conventions!  Yea!

I’ve never worn a jacket for so many consecutive hours!  We wore at least one jacket nearly every day (only four exceptions) and we had them on all day and all evening because we were outside all the time.  At home, when we put on a jacket, we go somewhere, we come home, and we take it off.  Maybe we put it on again later to go somewhere else, but we don’t wear it all day.

I’ve never set an alarm clock for so many early risings in a row.  We had only one day to sleep late–when we were at sea all day between Talinn and Gdansk.  I have always planned at least one day a week to sleep late and/or a day with fewer activities to give myself a break.  We were up early and busy all day every day.  The good part:  We had no trouble falling asleep at night!

In Britain, we never had a wash cloth in our hotel rooms, but the bath towels were huge!  A bathroom safety fact:  Europe does not allow electrical outlets in bathrooms except for electric shavers which have special prongs to fit the outlet.  I always had to dry my hair in the bedroom.

In Stockholm, two young women crossed against the light in front of our bus.  Our tour guide remarked sotto voce, “You are breaking the law and we have the right to kill you, but you are young and beautiful, so you may cross.”  In a face-off between our bus and a van (the bus won), our Berlin tour guide noted that “We are stronger than a van.”  The traffic lights in the cities turn yellow before they turn red and also before they turn green.  Drivers take green lights very seriously and horns will honk at anything that requires a delayed start or the use of a brake pedal.

A double bed in a European hotel means two twin beds pushed together.  The beds are usually made up separately, but sometimes have a shared blanket.

In Scotland, it’s appropriate to “address the haggis” before eating it.  Robert Burns, a Scottish poet, wrote Address to a Haggis.  The poem is read before the haggis is eaten at formal meals.

There are enough hedgerows in England to circle the equator two-and-a-half times.

Hay bales were wrapped in plastic everywhere we went.  Given the frequency of rain showers, my guess is the plastic keeps the bales from rotting.

In Iceland, there are earthquakes every day.  They are small and not usually noticeable, but the ground is always shaking.

The onion-shaped domes on the Russian palaces and churches are onion-shaped for the simple reason that onion shapes don’t collect snow.  The snow slides off, so its weight does not become a structural problem.

English was spoken nearly everywhere we went, but it wasn’t American English.  Sometimes it was easy to know the “translation”; other times, I had to see/hear it repeatedly to figure it out or ask a native.  Here are some words we heard frequently.

Pop in = drop in (pronounced “pope in”)

Way out (signage) = exit

Give way (highway sign) = yield

Bend (highway sign) = curve in the road

Circus = roundabout

Takeaway = carryout

No overtaking (highway sign) = no passing

Dual carriageway (highway sign) = divided highway

Ring road = beltway

Child minder = babysitter

Towel = sanitary napkin

Semi-skimmed milk = 2% milk

Zebra = a white-striped crosswalk (Russia)

Ted and I are really glad we flew home from Reykjavik on Delta last week instead of this week!  We took off only two-and-a-half hours late.

Even after nearly six full weeks of traveling, neither Ted nor I was eager for our vacation to end.  At the same time, when today arrived, we were ready to go home.  I think that’s the best of both worlds:  we’re still having fun, but we look forward to home.  Too bad it wasn’t quite that easy.

Our shuttle to the airport was arranged yesterday.  Three shuttles were going to serve our group, taking us to the airport according to our flight times:  4:30 am, 7:00 am, and 1:00 pm.  Our flight was at 10:30 am.  Guess which shuttle we were assigned to.  In the end, only one couple had a 7:00 am flight, so they were assigned to a cab and the rest of us were given a 30-minute reprieve and didn’t have to report to the shuttle until 5:00 am for the 45-minute drive to the airport.

We went to the hotel business center to print our boarding passes and the next “adventure” began.  Ted’s boarding pass printed just fine, but mine brought up an error message informing me that “government regulations” required that I print my boarding pass at the airport.  Fine, we’d have plenty of time to do that before our 10:30 am flight.  Then, around midnight, we had an email from Delta announcing that our flight would be delayed an hour and fifteen minutes.  At 7:00 am another email arrived to tell us the flight would be delayed an additional hour.  Of course, these were useless communications to us since the shuttles were already set up and we were at the airport by 5:45 am after only a few hours of sleep.

Ok, we’re at the airport, drinking coffee and hot chocolate with a sweet roll (no breakfast at the hotel before 6:00 am) and basically killing time with our new friends, Jim and Jory from North Carolina.  They were on the same flight as Ted and me.  Jory had to print her boarding pass at the airport too, but all was going well.  As we neared our now 12:30 pm departure time, we headed for the gate.  We would have gone sooner, but we couldn’t get near the gate until one hour before our flight.  Security or something.

Fine, we were waiting to go to the rest room for the last time before we boarded when the gatekeeper came on the PA and announced a dozen names of people who were to report to the check-in desk.  Jory’s name and mine were included.  All twelve of us were mystified.  We were told to bring our carry-on luggage and to surrender our passports to the gatekeeper.  Then we were taken through the airport and on an elevator to a secret (to us, at least) room where we saw a sign that explained what was going on.

We are apparently security risks to the U.S. government and the TSA.

In pairs of men or women, we were taken into an adjoining room for an additional pat-down and our luggage, purses, etc. were opened and the contents carefully examined.  When all twelve of us passed inspection, we were taken back upstairs to the gate area and told we could go to the head of the line for boarding.  Our passports were returned and we moved along.

Reykjavik is a small airport and does not have jetways–you have to climb stairs to get into the plane.  The larger international planes, however, are parked farther from the terminal, so we had to take a shuttle to get to the stairway to get on the plane.  I waved at Ted and Jory waved at Jim (they were standing in line as we were leaving to board the plane) and I gave Ted a thumbs-up so he wouldn’t worry (much).  When we tallied things up afterward, Ted had been through five security checks between arriving at the airport and boarding the plane (showing his passport, answering security questions, and getting his luggage scanned) and I had been through six.  I thought TSA in the U.S. was bad, but Reykjavik takes security very seriously.

The first-in-line priority for those of us who were super secure ended when we boarded the shuttle.  At that point, it was everyone for him/herself.  It took us twenty minutes after arriving at the plane to actually get up the stairs and into our seats.  Since the extra security check and the boarding process had taken most of the hour Jory and I had planned to wait in the boarding area, allowing no time for a restroom stop, I used the restroom on the plane.  As I was returning to my seat, I heard an announcement telling the crew to prepare the cabin for takeoff and to lock the cabin doors.  My first thought was “Ted isn’t here!”

I spoke with one of the stewardesses and she used her phone to call another stewardess who had apparently heard the same thing from other passengers.  After a quick check, another announcement told the crew to leave the front cabin door unlocked.  It was probably at least 20-30 minutes before the second shuttle load of passengers (half of the passengers on the flight, including Ted) arrived at the plane.  Ted said they spent at least 15 minutes at the gate waiting for four passengers.  Maybe those passengers were on a delayed flight like ours and it was easier to wait for them to make the connection than to put them on another flight.  Anyway, by the time the passengers from Shuttle No. 2 were finally seated (with only one door open to enter the plane instead of two), the plane was full instead of half-full.  Our 10:30 am flight took off at about 1:00 pm.  Delta:  Don’t Expect to Leave The Airport.

Question:  Don’t you think the crew would know before take-off how many passengers are expected on the flight?  Did they not notice that half the seats on a fully booked flight were still empty when they received the order to prepare for take-off?

As it turned out, our seats were directly behind Jory’s and Jim’s, so we could exchange comments during the flight to Minneapolis and, when we arrived, the four of us went through customs together.  This time we were able to head for the “U.S. Residents” line and I heard my favorite words from the customs officer:  “Welcome home.”

Luckily, we had a three-hour layover in Minneapolis so, even with our delays, we still managed to be on time (just) for our flight to St. Louis.  Kari and Teddy were at the airport to take us home, and the vacation was over.  The adventures, however, were not.

We got home from the airport around 3:30 pm, having been awake since the equivalent of 11:00 pm the previous evening with nothing to eat except the sweet roll at the airport and lunch on the plane hours ago.  We were hungry, so we went out to dinner and were eating pizza (six weeks without pizza!) by 4:30 pm.

Our plan was to go directly home without passing “Go” and go to bed, but that didn’t work out too well.  We got within a half mile of the house and the car died.  We walked home to wait for the tow truck and, two hours later, it arrived.  After that, we went to bed and slept twelve hours.  No early wake-up call in the morning, no sightseeing scheduled.  The vacation was fun, and it’s good to be home.

Many thanks to Kari, who stocked some essentials in the refrigerator so we didn’t need to make an immediate grocery run.

Ed. note:  The fuel pump on the car died.  The new one is working fine.

Our second day of touring in Iceland was a two-part day.  The morning was spent sightseeing in Reykjavik; the afternoon was . . . well, I’ll get to that.

Before I go on, I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that our guide sounds like he’s from Minnesota.  He has a northern accent in his English and his favorite expression is jajaja, as in “We should stop for lunch.”  “Jajaja.”  Or “That’s an amazing sight.”  “Jajaja.”  Just say ja three times as quickly as you can:  jajaja.  He says it so often that most of us on the tour are saying jajaja to each other and smiling when we do so.  He said he is often critiqued for telling stories that are too long, but we all found them interesting.  Stories about gremlins, trolls, etc. are good for the long winter nights in Iceland (or for amusing passengers on tour buses), so there is an abundance of these tales.  Sometimes he goes off-track a little and uses his second-favorite expression:  “. . . but that’s another story.”

As a Lutheran, the closest I’ve come to Lutheranism as a way of life was growing up in the upper Midwest where the German and Scandinavian populations make Lutheran churches a familiar sight.  In northern Europe, however, the Reformation had a profound impact, and in most of the countries we visited on this trip–including Iceland–Lutheranism is the state religion.  As a result, the Lutheran churches are huge and many are converted (not really a pun) Roman Catholic churches.  In fact, they are often referred to as simply the “Protestant” church with no further denotation, as opposed to the Roman Catholic church.

The largest Lutheran church in Reykjavik.

The sanctuary of the church. At first glance, it appears stark, but there are many beautiful sculptures and designs throughout the building.

The pulpit is in the front; the huge pipe organ is in the back.  The seat backs on the pews can be flipped to allow the congregation to face the altar for worship or the organ for concerts.

Reykjavik made the news in 1986 when President Reagan and Premier Gorbachev met there.  We stopped at the house where the meetings were held.

The Reagan-Gorbachev meetings in this house were the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

As we were driving around the city, we saw this person on a bicycle.

How many bags can a bag lady bike?

We went to the Pearl (so named because of it’s dome-shaped roof) and had the opportunity to see Reykjavik from its highest point.  It’s a very pretty city and we lucked out–it was a sunny day.

One view of the city.  See the Lutheran Church?  You can’t miss it!

We had a chance to see an old restored farm just outside the city.  It was very interesting to go into the buildings.  Many have sod roofs and the main house is attached to the stable with a tunnel-like hallway so that stock can be tended in bad winter weather.  The rooms are very small, and the furnishings are very cozy.  Small also means easier to heat in the winter.

Some of the houses and the attached stable.

The parlor.

The upstairs bedroom for the children.

The farm had a small church, complete with a model ship.  The church’s capacity was about twenty worshippers.  Men sat on the right, women on the left, and criminals (if any) in the front, facing the congregation.  One man from our group asked about the “fence” around the altar.  He must not be Lutheran or he’d know it was the communion rail.  The kneeling space is pretty minimal.

I’m not sure all the parishioners could see the pastor’s face while he was in the pulpit, especially since this guide was quite short and his head is above the crossbeams.

The model ship in the church.

And then it was time for a lunch break and the afternoon treat:  the Blue Lagoon.  I had never heard of the Blue Lagoon, but it is apparently a defining experience of visiting Iceland, as in “Did you swim in the Blue Lagoon while you were there?”  It was about a 45-minute drive from Reykjavik and, on the way, our guide pointed out that we were passing the Swedish embassy:  IKEA.  (Laughter from the group.)

The Blue Lagoon is on a peninsula of Iceland.  Of course the ground is lava, so it is porous.  There is a salty hot spring 300 meters below the surface of the Blue Lagoon and it is believed that regular use of these lagoon waters promotes youth, health, and longevity.  There is even a special line of skin products to enhance your experience.  My enhanced experience included the first “gang” changing room I’ve used since I graduated from high school.  When in Reykjavik, . . .

Ted was skeptical, but took the plunge (literally) and we had about two hours to enjoy the warm (99°-106°) water.  Afterward, Ted agreed that it had been a very good experience and very relaxing.  Not to mention that we both look younger now.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures in the actual Blue Lagoon because it would be stupid to bring a camera into a swimming area and there was no place to leave it once you exited the locker room.  As a result, I only have a picture of the sign at the entrance.  I can’t really describe the experience–maybe that’s the magic of the special waters–but it was a wonderful afternoon and a highlight of our Iceland visit.

This one is self-explanatory.

Not the actual Blue Lagoon, but a pool just outside the lagoon with water just like that in the lagoon.

My friend, Elaine, took this picture in the Blue Lagoon in November.  It was 30 degrees and windy.  She had a warm hat on her head.

Finally, as we were walking in downtown Reykjavik on the last day of our vacation, I saw a sign at a bus stop that fit our trip.  There is a brand name of sportswear in northern Europe called 66° North (the rounded Arctic Circle latitude).  The company has a variety of advertising posters, but this one perfectly described the cool weather (mostly mid-50s to mid-60s) we experienced as we traveled, wearing one, two, or even three layers of jackets, in countries at approximately the latitude of Anchorage to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Where we spent our vacation.

I’m not sure why our tour today is called the Golden Circle Tour, but it is, so there!  It was an all-day tour and I learned as much about geography today alone as I did in a full semester when I was in college.

To appreciate Iceland, the first thing you have to know is that it is the second newest inhabited land mass on the planet.  Only New Zealand is newer.  Iceland was formed by shield volcanoes.  These are volcanoes that erupted under the “shield” of the Ice Age glaciers during warm periods.  Instead of building a cone, the weight of the glaciers forced the lava to spread out.  The landscape in most places we saw looks like miniature moguls for skiing.

The second thing you need to know about Iceland is that the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates meet in Iceland.  It is the only place in the world where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge can be seen on land and the effects of two major plates drifting apart can be easily observed.  The North American plate is rising, the Eurasian plate is dropping, and the two are moving apart at a rate of about two centimeters per year.  The area between the plates is called the Rift Zone.  The changes in the land are happening so rapidly, they are easily observed over a period of just a few years.  Iceland must be heaven on earth for geologists!

The rising North American plate is on the left; the dropping Eurasian plate is on the right.  They are moving apart.

The rising North American ridge.

Everywhere we went, there were signs of the tectonic plates moving apart and rising/falling.

I expected Iceland to be similar to Yellowstone.  While there are similarities (both have hot springs and geysers), each is unique.  Iceland’s ground is very hot.  There are places where the dead cannot be buried because the bodies would literally be boiled.  Icelanders heat their homes with hot water.  You don’t have to go very deep to find 300-degree water.  It is carried in pipes above ground, and swimming pools and hot tubs abound–nearly all outdoors.  They are used year-round and provide nice, warm venues for watching the northern lights.  At our lunch on the Golden Circle Tour, we ate at a restaurant in the relatively small geyser area.  Geyser water and geyser bread were on the menu.  The bread is buried in the ground and removed after 24 hours.  It tasted just like regular bread, but it’s hard to imagine the earth being warm enough to bake bread.

Geyser bread baked in the hot ground.

We saw two especially interesting geysers.  One is called the weather forecasting geyser.  On a clear day, the water cannot be seen in this geyser, but when the air pressure drops, the water rises.  If you can see the water, it’s going to rain.  (Based on our experience in Iceland and the other northern countries we’ve visited, you can probably see the water most days.)

The other interesting geyser erupts every 5-7 minutes.  It’s not as big as Old Faithful, but you don’t have to wait long to witness several eruptions.  We were standing right at the ropes for one eruption.  We could tell the geyser was getting ready to erupt because the water in the basin started sloshing back and forth.  When it erupted, a huge bubble rose out of the ground and then burst into the geyser flume.  The bubble lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was amazing to see it rise several feet out of the ground and then explode.  Wow!

You can see the splash of the water from the burst bubble.

A geyser field we walked through.

Don’t stop before you read the last line.  A tourist with a drone sent the drone over the dangerous ground to take pictures.

One of our “comfort stops” was at a small shopping mall.  When they were building the mall, a rift in the earth was discovered.  Instead of changing the site, they built the mall over the rift, strung red lights over the bottom of it, and covered it with glass.  The mall includes a museum-like exhibit all along the rift.  It was very interesting and definitely not like any mall I’ve seen before.

Separating tectonic plates beneath this shopping mall.

Only the birch tree is native to Iceland, so trees have been imported from other northern locales, including Alaska.  Forests have been planted and Iceland expects to be timber self-reliant within thirty years.  Still, trees don’t grow overly tall this far north, so there is a saying that if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest, stand up.

Fishing, especially cod, used to be the main source of revenue for Iceland, but tourism has taken its place and is now Iceland’s greatest source of income.  Another major source of income is the production of aluminum.  The bauxite is imported, but the abundant and inexpensive hydropower and geothermal energy greatly offset the cost of the bauxite.  Aluminum smelting, a growing industry, is a topic of debate in the country among environmentalists and economists.

Most of the landscape we saw looked otherworldly.  Over time, the lava becomes soil and can be farmed, but there is relatively little farmland, so food prices are very high.  Ted and I had dinner at a local restaurant that featured a buffet and we spent over $100 on the meal–far more than an equivalent meal would have cost in the U.S.  On another evening, we went to a local restaurant with two other couples.  A plate of spaghetti with a glass of wine cost $80 for the two of us.  Horses are numerous in Iceland for recreation and for food.  They are the equivalent of cattle in the U.S.  Horse beef and foal are on most menus.  Although we were told horse beef is better than cow beef, we couldn’t bring ourselves to order the roast foal.

This ground is lava and it’s rising, dropping, and moving apart everywhere you look.

Even in this pretty setting, you can see there is very little topsoil and the ground is moving.

It was a bittersweet feeling to leave the ship this morning to fly to Iceland.  We have many new acquaintances whom we’ll probably never see again.  But Iceland calls. . .  We were in Stavanger just three days ago, then Flåm, and then Bergen.  Today we had to fly from Bergen back to Stavanger to go to Iceland.  It seems backward, but that’s how it is.

Norway must hold the world record for tunnels.  Thanks to Alfred Nobel, dynamite simplifies travel through the mountains in Norway.  On the 30-minute drive from the ship to the airport, we passed through five tunnels.  One was quite long–several miles–and even had an exit to another road from inside the tunnel.  There is one tunnel in Norway that is so long, there is a rest stop in it so that drivers can park and blink before they go into a tunnel trance driving such a long distance.  (We weren’t in that tunnel.)  When we arrived at the airport, we couldn’t help smiling at the signage.

When you’ve gotta go . . .

All went well until we got on the plane.  I couldn’t believe the two seats I saw were the ones printed on our tickets.  They were immediately in front of the emergency door (is that legal???), but the stewardess assured me that we should be seated there.  Ok, fine.  It’s not a long flight and we probably won’t need the emergency exit.

I have no idea how anyone is going to get out through the emergency door with these two seats in front of it.

During the forty minutes from Bergen to Stavanger, I became increasingly tense and had to fight tears.  I just wanted to go home!!!!  Ted was seated on the aisle side and I was beside the door.  I couldn’t see anything to my left (Ted is bigger than I am) or to my right (no window in the door) or ahead of me (seat back of the next row).  I couldn’t even see anything between the seats ahead of me.  I was just sitting in a tiny little viewless world.

I finally told Ted I wanted to ask if we could change seats when we landed in Stavanger.  He said he was fine and it was only another hour to Iceland.  At the time, he didn’t realize that I was a long way from fine.  I talked to the stewardess and she said after the additional passengers boarded in Stavanger, she’d see what she could do.  Thank goodness, she found seats across the aisle.  Almost immediately after we took the new seats, I calmed down and Iceland sounded like a better idea than going home.  I’ve never liked caves, but I ride elevators and have had MRIs without incident.  I didn’t know claustrophobia was a problem until I was boxed into that tiny seat space.  Believe me, I’m checking seat assignments a lot more carefully in the future!

I took pictures of Iceland from the air as we approached Reykjavik.  Just like England, it doesn’t look like home.

Iceland from above.

Approaching Reykjavic.

We arrived in Iceland today, the last leg of our vacation.  We are in a hotel with high-speed internet, so I can finally post some blogs again.  I’m going to date the blogs to match the days we were actually in those places, so if I have interested readers, you might want to back up to St. Petersburg, Russia and then move forward as I fill in the blanks.

So far, Iceland looks awesome.  We flew in from Bergen, Norway and didn’t arrive until late afternoon.  The Golden Circle Tour begins tomorrow morning.

The last stop on our 15-day cruise was Bergen, the second largest city in Norway.  Bergen was an important port of the Hanseatic League trading empire.  Because most buildings in the city were built of wood, Bergen has burned 16 times, the last in 1955.  Each time, until 1955, the city chose to rebuild in the old pattern.  The 1955 fire burned nearly the entire city.  Afterward, the city proactively worked to make itself more fireproof by adding open spaces in the city, more space between buildings, wider streets, etc. to avoid such a catastrophic fire in the future.  Sixty-two of the original wooden structures remain today, most on or near the Bryggen Wharf.  The city is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because these buildings are relics of the wooden building style that used to be common in Northern Europe.

It was a cloudy morning, so we took our umbrellas for our walking tour of the city, but we lucked out.  There was only one ten-minute downpour and our guide was talking to us under an overhang at the time.  She extended her remarks a little bit, the rain stopped, and we moved on.

The Bryggen Wharf–a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After the guided tour, we spent some time walking around by ourselves and enjoyed the city.  The architectural style is not what we see in St. Peters.  One of the alley shops sold moose leather products.  I couldn’t believe how soft and lightweight moose leather is!  I lusted after an expensive purse and an expensive carry-all.

McDonald’s is in the cream-colored building on the right.  No visible arches.

This is one of the shopping alleys. We were under the overhang on the left during the rain.

These alley buildings are filled with little shops.

A Viking restaurant–complete with giant Viking horns at the door.

Of course, Bergen is on a fjord (it’s Norway!), so there are mountains just behind the shoreline.  We took a funicular to the top of one and had some pretty views of the city.

A city view of Bergen from above.

Lunch time for the goats on the mountaintop.

Just as we found the Finnish version of Schroeder in Helsinki (Schroder), we found a form of Soerens in Bergen.  The ø changes the pronunciation of the oe to the way so many people in Oostburg and Hingham pronounced my name:  Zernz instead of So’-rens.  Maybe there’s a similarity between the Old World Dutch and the Old World Norwegian and they were just using the old form of pronunciation.  Whatever–it was fun to see Sørensen and fun to be in Bergen.

Soerens, Sørensen–probably the same family line.

The storms that rocked our ship last night caused major mudslides in Flåm.  As a result, our train/coach excursion described as the “quintessential Norway experience” was cancelled.  Ted and I were looking forward to this excursion as one of the highlights of our cruise.  The trip is described as one of the most beautiful railway journeys in the world.  The route climbs nearly 3,000 feet and passes through 20 tunnels, with photo stops at two noteworthy waterfalls and an open-air museum before reaching the famous Stalheim Hotel.  We were supposed to have lunch on the hotel veranda, overlooking the Nærøyfjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The return trip takes the mountain descent known as the Stalheimskleiva, one of the steepest roads in Europe with 13 hairpin turns.  It is described as “not a trip for those who fear heights” and can be found on the “dangerous roads” website.

The cruise director did an amazing overnight job of arranging an alternate (complimentary) excursion for those of us who were planning to take the railway/coach trip.  (The price of the rail/coach trip was refunded, of course.)  The alternate excursion was a three-hour cruise into the Nærøyfjord.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it is one of the most beautiful fjords in the world and is largely unspoiled by human development.  It was a very satisfactory alternative to the rail/coach trip.

Our day began early.  We were told last night that we would enter the fjord at 7:00 am and that it would be well worth getting up early to see the scenery in the fjord along the two-hour approach to Flåm.  We’ve been getting up early every day since June 27, so what’s new?  We did get up early, and it was worth it.  In the early morning, low clouds and fog were hanging over the fjord, creating picturesque views all the way.

Near Flåm on the Nærøyfjord.  There is a road on the other side of the water.

Beautiful, just beautiful!

This is described as one of the most spectacular fjord areas in the world, with steep mountains rising to nearly 6,000 feet above the water.  Some of the farms along the fjord are inaccessible for up to eight months of the year.  You really have to be self-sufficient to survive like that!  To communicate with each other, the population on this fjord has had a postal service since the mid-1600s.

You can’t make up this kind of beauty.

This farm has its own ZIP code.  (Apologies for the window reflection.  There were no outside decks on this boat.)

While I was taking pictures along the fjord, a man sitting nearby told me that if I want beautiful pictures, I can just go to www.fjords.com.  I guess I could do that for just about anything I want to see, but why would I want to collect pictures instead of seeing these things for myself?  I don’t even want to check out that website!

Waterfalls are everywhere along the fjord. This is one of the larger ones.

We’re happy to be here, even though it’s not yet 8:00 am, it’s 47 degrees, and we’re wearing two jackets each in July.

Flåm is a very small town.  That lack of development is part of what makes this fjord special.  Because it has such a small harbor, the larger cruise ships cannot dock here, so the town is not overrun with thousands and thousands of people each day.  It’s definitely a treat to visit a place this beautiful.

This is the entire town of Flåm.  It’s about the size Hingham was when I lived there.

Compare the city map of Flåm on the right to the city map of Stavanger on the left.  Definitely fewer streets in Flåm!

I haven’t written much about our ship.  It’s brand new.  It was christened and launched in March 2016 and it’s beautiful, with Scandinavian décor.  Does “heated bathroom floor” give you an idea of the level of luxury Viking provides?  There is a hot tub, an infinity pool, and another larger pool in the Winter Garden, which is a sunroom with a retractable roof.

The infinity pool and the hot tub.

The “regular” restaurant where we usually eat dinner is at least a three- or four-star restaurant.  No meal is less than three courses and all the food is superb and attractively presented.  The waiter always holds my chair for me and places my napkin in my lap when I’m seated.  The two additional restaurants have to be rated with four or five stars.  They serve five-course meals, including an unnumbered course to cleanse the palate before continuing.  The wines are perfectly paired to the food served.  The dining room provides a buffet for breakfast and lunch.  All of this food is included in the price of the cruise–another part of the luxury.

The buffet dining room for breakfast and lunch.

A piece of cheesecake Ted ordered for dessert one evening.

I don’t remember what this was called but the chocolate mousse filling was to die for.  The green line is chopped pistachio nuts.  It has the recommended serving size of one tablespoon of whipped cream–just enough.

The staff is the closest I’ll ever come to having servants.  Ted and I are always “sir” and “madame” and the staff lives to serve.  I had a chance to talk with one of the staff members on a more personal level and I asked if Viking is a good company to work for.  (I was really asking if they are as happy as they appear to the passengers.)  The answer was that it’s a dream job with wonderful benefits and quicker benefits than other cruise lines.  There is also the opportunity to be promoted from within.  That makes me feel a little less guilty about taking off for a day of sightseeing with good wishes from the people who are staying behind to make our bed, clean our room, and prepare the food for our return.

Our ship is relatively small–only 900 passengers and eight decks, compared to larger cruise ships with 6,000-8,000 passengers and 15-18 decks.  Once we docked beside a huge ship that even had a climbing wall on its topmost deck.  Our ship has a miniature golf course on the topmost deck.  Being small, however, means we can dock in ports with smaller harbors, so Ålborg and Flåm are on our itinerary and do not include the big ship crowds.

We’re the baby ship–second from the left.

Our miniature golf course.  No climbing wall for us!

We have a guest lecturer onboard nearly every afternoon to discuss a topic of interest along our route.  Some of the lecture topics include the economic effect of the North Sea oil fields on Norway, the problems of the European Union, the rise and fall of communism, etc.

We also have onboard entertainers, as well as some who are brought onboard for one or two evenings.  There are two entertainment venues with a show in each most evenings.  Ted and I have attended many of them and especially enjoyed the tributes to the Beatles and ABBA.  (Not cover bands, but really good renditions of the songs.)  One night the staff presented a hilarious play that combined the story styles of James Bond and Maxwell Smart.  At other times, we attended a Parisian cabaret night, an evening with the Rat Pack, and a combination comedian/rock ‘n’ roll singer, which sounds weird but was very entertaining.

ABBA night.  Good music!

One thing I find very amusing is that, in the public restrooms onboard, there are (recorded) birds singing!  I have no idea why I’d want to feel like I’m outdoors listening to birds sing while I do whatever.

Most of the time we are at sea, we can see land in the distance, but not always.  Still, the ride has been very smooth–until we left Stavanger today.  For whatever reason, the sea is rougher tonight.  At the end of the evening performance, we were all lurching against the walls on our way out of the theater.  Granted, nearly all of us drink wine with dinner every evening, but a glass of wine isn’t enough to make us stagger as we were doing.  We laughed and commented that, until this evening, we had hardly given a thought to being on a ship.

Our stateroom is on Deck 5.  With only eight decks, it’s easy for us to use the stairs instead of the elevator.  On each stairway landing, there is a sign like the one in the picture below so that you know if you should go to the left or to the right to reach your stateroom.  It makes me smile every time I see this sign because our stateroom number is 5009.  You’ve got to love cruising!

Yes, we have an odd stateroom.  (P.S.  Check the outdoor temperature in the upper left of the sign.  It’s July up north!)

To be honest, I’d never heard of Stavanger (stah-vahn’-ger), Norway until it appeared on our cruise itinerary.  I had no idea why we’d stop there until I checked out the excursions offered.  Well, it’s in Norway, so I should have guessed that “beautiful fjord” was on the agenda.

We had a lovely four-hour cruise up the fjord and back.  The scenery was just like I always thought a fjord would look.  The highlight of the cruise was Pulpit Rock.  The top of the rock is 604 meters above the fjord.  You can hike to the top, but it is a nine-hour round trip from the bottom, and we didn’t have that much time.  We settled for photographs.

The square outcrop in the center is the “pulpit.”  It’s much larger than it looks in the photo–consider it’s nearly 2,100 feet above my camera.

Continuing down the fjord, we reached a large waterfall.  The water is clean enough to drink and the waterfall was accessible to our tour boat, so the captain pulled right up to the fjord wall.  The crew filled buckets with waterfall water and distributed a glass of it to each of us.

Potable waterfall water–deliciously cold!

We had a lunch stop at a local restaurant along the fjord and were treated to Norwegian sweetheart waffles.  Instead of four square waffles like we usually see, these have five heart-shaped pieces joined at the points.  They were served with locally made (possibly by the restaurant owners) fresh raspberry jam.  The raspberry season lasts two or three months this far north.

When we returned to Stavanger (that’s with a hard g as in girl), we had time to walk around the pretty town.  There was a business section where a crew was setting things up for a festival (lots of small sales booth tents), complete with music (stage and big speakers).  In the residential section, the white houses were very picturesque.

As the ship tour director pointed out in nearly every port talk, the town has cobblestone streets and walks and requires comfortable walking shoes.

Later in our walk, we saw this bike parking. Cute!

By late afternoon, we were hungry, so we stopped in a restaurant for a snack.  When I saw the first baby carriage, I thought “wow!” and then I saw several more.  I can’t believe young mothers would rather push this around than a smaller stroller, but maybe it works better on the bumpy cobblestones.  I couldn’t help thinking “rubber baby buggy bumpers.”

With this baby buggy, you’d have the option of carrying the baby and filling the buggy with a lot of shopping purchases.

If it’s the sign icon, this must be the standard baby transportation.

Norway ranks as the second happiest country in the world (after Denmark)–maybe because of this attitude.

A good philosophy!

What a beautiful, clean little town Ålborg is!  Denmark is recognized as the happiest country in the world and Ålborg is ranked as the happiest city in Denmark.  It’s hard to beat that on a Sunday morning.  It’s holiday time in Europe, so the streets were without crowds and the sun was shining.  It was definitely a day for happiness.

One of the first things we saw in Ålborg was a converted telephone booth.  There are still a lot of working telephone booths (with an actual telephone inside) in the cities we’ve visited, but no one wanted this particular phone booth.  The city of Ålborg said it would take it and the city converted it to a little tourist information center.  After doing so, there were a number of requests from other entities to buy the phone booth, but Ålborg told them they were too late; Ålborg is keeping it.

Surprise! Viking information is available here and we’re on a Viking cruise. Hmmm. . .

On our city tour/walk, we passed some very tiny houses.  They were formerly the homes of families, but are now more popular for singles or just-married couples.

A row of little houses, complete with a single (?) resident.

This house is called the “pregnant house.”  I have no idea what purpose the bulge on the front serves.

In a courtyard behind the little houses, we saw this apple tree. Our guide said it is a typical way to grow a fruit tree because it uses much less space in a small area.

The post office in Ålborg dates back to the 1600s.  In those days, pigeons were used to deliver messages.  The pigeon holes are still visible in the old building, although delivery methods are more modern now.

There are nine pigeon holes on each face of the tower, just below the long narrow windows.

Of course we visited a local church.  Even with the reduction in ornate decorations following the Reformation from Catholicism to Lutheranism, the old European churches are very beautiful.  Our Baltic Sea cruise is subtitled “Viking Homelands” and includes the lands in which the Vikings lived.  It is a tradition in the Viking Lutheran churches to hang a model ship from the ceiling.  God guides the ship safely on voyages and then thanks are given to God in return.

Here is the ship hanging in the Ålborg church.

The altar and baptismal font (left) of the church.  There is a large pipe organ in the back of the sanctuary.

It’s cold up here.  Blankets are ready for worshippers.

As we traveled through the European Union, we heard over and over again about the wonderful social benefits.  Health care is free for all.  In fact, this has created an industry called “health tourism.”  People from countries with expensive health care costs (e.g., the United States) come to these countries on a “vacation.”  Then, while visiting, they become ill with their existing expensive condition (cancer, heart problem, etc.) and have the condition treated/cured at no cost.  They return home, having spent less on the travel than they would have on the treatment in their own countries.

A similar phenomenon is happening in the schools.  Education through the college level is free to all.  In Denmark, students are also paid about €400 per month–enough for rent and food.  This is great, because it results in a highly educated population.  It also attracts many students from other countries who are seeking a first-class education without the heavy burden of student loans.

Denmark is a wonderful place to begin a new business.  Incubator buildings for start-ups are rent-free (paid for with tax income) and entrepreneurs are given an allowance to support them while their businesses become established.  In addition, at least in Denmark, everyone is cared for.  If you cannot make a living wage, the government will give you an allowance sufficient to provide you with a reasonable standard of living.

The cost of this is an income tax rate of 35-79 percent.  The tax on the purchase of a new car is 180 percent in Denmark.  (Not a typo–it’s a three-digit percentage!)  This definitely encourages people to buy smaller, less expensive cars!  The many social benefits are taking a toll on the financial base of the country because people from overseas who take advantage of the health care and educational benefits are not contributing to the tax income.

There is a downside to all of these “free” financial benefits.  Our guide mentioned that the generous benefits contribute significantly to a lack of initiative among some of the population:  “If I don’t like how things are going for me financially, I’ll just let the government support me.”  I heard a similar comment about initiative from a South Korean in one of my graduate classes.  I asked him about the focus on math and science in many Asian countries and he said it is true that Korea/Asia produces students who excel in math and science.  On the other hand, he pointed out, with the broader curriculum in the United States, students have opportunities to try out new ideas in many subjects and to develop new things in more than a single field of study.  My conclusion:  there is no easy solution to the best way of doing things.  Even so, Ålborg on a summer Sunday morning was a lovely place to visit.

The short version:  There was a mermaid who fell in love with a prince.  In order to marry him, she had to become human.  She decided to go for it, but transforming from an amphibian to a human takes time and, before she was human, the prince fell in love with another woman.  What a jerk!  On the other hand, what kind of sane prince would be hanging out with a mermaid?  But it’s a fairy tale, so we suspended belief and enjoyed the sight of the graceful and iconic statue of the Little Mermaid on the waterfront of Copenhagen.

Look closely.  The mermaid’s feet are still transforming from mermaid to human form.

From that fairy tale sculpture, we walked to the next one.  Again, the short version and my apologies because I don’t know mythology, so I don’t know the names of the gods and goddesses.  A goddess from Denmark wanted more land for tiny little Denmark, so she asked the god, who was in Sweden, to give her some.  The god told her she could have as much land as she could plow in one night.  Being a goddess, she turned her four sons into oxen and plowed enough land to add a significant amount to now-a-little-less-tiny Denmark.

Mom and the boys/oxen, plowing land to make Denmark larger.

Then it was on to the royal housing.  There are four arc-shaped buildings forming a circle in King’s Square.  The queen lives in one and the crown prince and his family live in another, putting the crown princess next door to her mother-in-law and the four kids next door to Grandma.  The crown prince’s family will move to the queen’s building when she dies.  I think the other two buildings house the parliament and offices.

The queen is much loved by the Danes.  She is a figurehead with even less Parliamentary power than Queen Elizabeth II, but she loves Denmark and her people.  She is 76, and the Danes are thrilled that she said she will continue to reign until she dies.  The crown prince and his wife are very popular and very much a part of Copenhagen life (it’s a small country).  They jog on the city paths, their kids go to the public school down the street, and the princess rides her bike to the school to bring the kids home each day.

In the center of the royal buildings is a statue of King Frederick II.  It is supposedly the finest equestrian sculpture ever designed.  King Frederick faces the cathedral, as is proper, since the king looks up only to God.  In truth, our guide told us, King Frederick II was a drunkard and could barely sit a horse, much less ride one.  He appears to be safely astride the horse in rigid sculpture form.

King Frederick II on his horse, looking toward the cathedral.  All Danish kings were named Frederick.

Copenhagen is a very green city.  Its goal is to be 100 percent carbon-neutral by 2025–just nine years from now.  To achieve this goal, the city has created many green park areas and rooftop gardens.  Bicycles are a popular form of transportation, reducing carbon emissions.  In front of one of the cathedrals is a sculpture representing a serious consequence of global warming.  Polar bears cannot hunt from land; they hunt from ice floes.  One result of global warming is the melting of the ice floes, thus reducing the polar bears’ ability to hunt and survive.

The arc represents the increase in global warming, ending with the demise of the polar bear.

We went to the top of the bell tower in the cathedral behind the polar bear sculpture (you can see it in the picture above) for some beautiful overlooks of the city.

A beautiful view on a beautiful day.  One of the few days we didn’t need to wear our jackets.

An up-close view of typical buildings in Copenhagen.

On our way back to the ship, we passed a car show.  We could have been in Anytown, USA on a summer afternoon.

The car on the right is an Opel, the same brand (different model) we bought when we first got married.  It cost us $2200 for the larger 2.2-liter engine.

Do you see anything you like, Brother Tom?

Denmark has been ranked as the happiest country in the world, and it seems to be true, except at traffic lights.  Our tour guide gave us the Danish definition of a nanosecond:  it’s the time between when the traffic light turns green and the first horn honks.

This was the warmest day of our trip.  The temperature reached the upper 80s, and we spent the entire day without wearing a jacket or using an umbrella.

On Berlin streets . . .  The Brandenburg Gate, originally the west entrance to Berlin, is the only surviving city gate.  The Berlin Wall actually went around the Brandenburg Gate, putting it in the eastern sector of the city. . . . The Berlin street named Unter den Linden runs from the Brandenburg Gate to the palace.  People used to walk on that street to be seen, much like the Champs Elysée in Paris. . . . There is a saying that Berlin has three kinds of streets:  ein Strassen für laufen, ein Strassen für maufen, und ein Strassen für zaufen.  A street to walk, a street to shop, and a street to drink. . . . The Rodeo Drive of Berlin is the Kurfurstendamm.  That would make it ein Strassen für maufen. . . . We were advised not to jaywalk in Berlin because, as we all know, Germans like to follow the rules.

Because of all the bombing damage (60 percent of the city was destroyed in World War II and the rest was badly damaged), everything in Berlin is restored.  Our guide pointed out a large building that still needs to be restored, but there hasn’t been enough money to do the work.  In the meantime, the building is covered with a false façade and painted to look like the fully restored building.  No eyesores allowed.

Only a painted façade; not a real department store.

 Berlin has a smaller population than Paris, but seven times the area of Paris.  With that much space, Berlin has no heavy traffic problems.  According to our guide, the city has reacted to that situation by setting up construction zones in order to create traffic problems.  He pointed out that we would see no one working in any of the construction zones (we didn’t) because their only purpose is to obstruct traffic.  If we noticed someone working in a construction zone, the guide told us to take a picture and send it to the mayor, because something is wrong.  If we saw only one person in the construction zone and that person was not working, it’s ok because he’s there to make sure no one else comes to the site to work. ☺

At Humboldt University in Berlin’s Opera Square, there is an empty library underground.  This is in commemoration of the 1933 “burning of the books” when all books relating to communism were burned.

The Nazis executed over six million Jews in the concentration camps–the largest number of “undesirable” people.  At that time, Jews made up less than one percent of the German population.  Most Jews who were executed were from Poland, where Jews comprised less than nine percent of the total population.

There’s a concrete sculpture in Berlin that encloses two American automobiles.  I don’t remember what this symbolized, but the guide noted they had to use American rather than German cars because German men love their cars more than they love their wives.

What is this artist trying to tell me?

When commercial buildings are constructed in Berlin, one percent of the construction cost must be spent on art at the site.

Our guide remembered the candy and raisin drop during the Berlin airlift.  He said that after so many food shortages, it was an extraordinary treat to have something sweet to eat.  Unfortunately, he never caught one of the dropped bags of sweets.

During our free time in the city, we went to a sidewalk beer garden and had a glass of German beer.  Then we got back on the train for the three-hour ride back to the ship.  (Note:  Only eleven of the 900 passengers remained on board the ship today.  Everyone else took one of the six or seven excursions to Berlin and the surrounding area.)  After a long and tiring 16-hour day of travel and sightseeing, we arrived at the ship and were greeted by the entire staff in full dress uniforms, forming two lines for us to pass between.  A small band was playing, the staff was smiling and singing, and we were each given a welcome-back glass of champagne.  What a homecoming!

Prosit!

Berlin has a dark history as a result of World War II.  More than 60 percent of the city was destroyed by bombs.  After the war, the country and Berlin were the spoils divided among the victors:  Russia, Britain, France, and the U.S.

The history of the concentration camps lingers, and Berlin is not trying to forget it.  There are memorials to five groups of people who were sent to the camps:  Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped people, and pacifists.  The city is dedicated to learning from history and has made a resolution and created a sculpture to affirm that there will never again be a war started by Germany.  There is another very moving sculpture dedicated to those who have lost their lives in all wars.  it portrays a woman holding her dead son.

The open roof of the memorial building exposes the sculpture to the elements, symbolic of the woman’s suffering.

Our tour guide’s father was sent to a concentration camp for being a pacifist; his aunt lived in East Berlin and could not go to West Berlin to visit the family until the Wall came down.  Yet, the overall outlook of our guide and of Berlin is very positive.  Unlike Gdansk, Berlin rebuilt with modern structures, so it looks like a contemporary city.  Most of the city buildings are less than 60 years old, having been rebuilt in the 1950s.

The Berlin Wall was literally built overnight.  More than 18,000 Nazi soldiers were guarding the East-West city boundary of barbed wire.  One night, those soldiers were ordered to build the wall.  As people saw the construction, they jumped over the temporary barbed wire fence to escape.  Many were shot.

There were actually two walls–an inner one and an outer one–with about the width of a city street between them, and they surrounded all of West Berlin.  Why two walls?  Because it was easier to defend two lower walls with an open space between them than one higher wall that required only one attempt to escape.  The Germans called the open area a security strip; the West called it the death strip.  Why surround the western sector?  Not to keep the East Berliners inside, but to prevent them from entering West Berlin.  Parts of the Wall remain as memorials and there is a double row of bricks following the line where the wall stood, so that everyone can see where it was.

Some of the Wall was left standing and citizens were invited to paint murals on it. This portion portrays the stream of people coming through the crumbled Berlin Wall.

This is an undecorated portion of the original Berlin Wall.

The double row of bricks marking the placement of the 90 miles of the Berlin Wall.

The American Checkpoint Charlie was so named because it was the third checkpoint–Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.  In fact, it had little significance because it was never a true checkpoint.  If the American soldiers saw someone passing into East Berlin, their attitude was “So long, have a nice day.”  If someone was entering West Berlin, the response was “Welcome.”  It was only on the East that the Wall was significant.  Today, the real building from Checkpoint Charlie is in a Berlin museum.  The building on the street is a small fake.  The soldiers “guarding” the fake checkpoint are, in fact, university students earning extra money to pose with tourists.

This is the fake building, complete with fake soldiers, at the real site of the American Checkpoint Charlie (and in front of the real McDonald’s).

The population of Berlin is about three million.  Since the end of World War II, about two million Berliners have left the city.  During the same time, about two million other people have moved into the city.  The result is a new and different Berlin.

The history of Berlin sounds sad and depressing–and it is.  Berlin and St. Petersburg are emotionally difficult cities to visit as a tourist.  In spite of this, we found Berlin to be a lovely city, filled with positive energy.  The hotels and hardships are not forgotten, but Berliners are looking to the future, not the past.

Berlin doesn’t want to forget.  This is a “stumble stone,” set very slightly higher than the surrounding cobblestones.  Each stumble stone is inscribed with a name and placed in front of the house from which that person “disappeared” in Nazi Germany.

I know the title is an overused pun, but I couldn’t resist.

Ninety-seven percent of Gdansk, Poland was destroyed in World War II.  After the war, the city decided to rebuild itself in the old style.

This is a before-and-after picture of one small part of Gdansk. The upper portion shows the war damage and the lower portion shows the reconstruction.

In days long gone by, there was a window tax in Gdansk, so most buildings were built tall and deep.  A typical building might have been 12 m wide, 70 m deep, and five stories tall to avoid paying the window tax.

The tax started after three windows, so most buildings are only two or three windows wide, but very tall and deep.  It sounds dark to me.

Amber, or Baltic Gold as it’s called, is plentiful in the Baltic region and Gdansk is its capital.  We had a chance to see the three kinds of amber (white, green, and yellow) and learned a simple test for real vs. fake amber.  When dropped into salt water, amber, which is very light, will float; fake amber will sink.  The city is so well-known for amber that the sports stadium and team color are yellow.

Go, team, go!!  Amber, amber, amber!!

Gdansk was the home of Fahrenheit.  Guess what he invented.  Given that information, isn’t it strange that the city, as well as all of Europe, uses the Celsius scale?

Fahrenheit’s thermometer.  Aren’t we glad we have smaller ones now?

On a playful note, we saw a toy museum as we walked around the city and, possibly, the city’s motto.

Not only retro toys, but a retro TV as well.

We’re gonna party in Gdansk tonight!

While Tallinn was under communist rule, it was illegal to speak, write, or sing in the Estonian language.  In 1991, the people of Estonia had a bloodless Singing Revolution.  Approximately 300,000 Estonians gathered in an arena and sang patriotic songs in their own language.  They did this in the presence of Russian tanks, not knowing if the tanks would be used against them or not.  They were not.  In 1994, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Estonia became a free country again.

Tallinn has an old (high) town within the city wall and a–relatively speaking–new (low) town outside the city wall and downhill from high town.

A view of low town from high town in Tallinn.

There is a pharmacy in the new town that has been in business since Medieval times (I mentioned it’s a relatively new town), making it the oldest operating pharmacy in Europe.  It’s not far from a Medieval café where we were invited inside and were given samples of delicious honey-roasted almonds prepared in the Medieval manner.  Yes, the remarkable thing about this café is that it operates as it has since its Medieval days:  without electricity, running water, central heating, or any of the other amenities of the modern age.

The candles in the lamps are real, not electric, and provide the only lighting in the café.

On a sidewalk in Tallinn, we saw a girl playing a Medieval instrument.  Our guide didn’t know what it was called.  It has three rows of stops on the lower side of the neck like an organ, as well as strings like a violin, and it’s held in a guitar-like position.

What kind of instrument is she playing?

We saw a typical-sized Medieval home on our city walk.  It is the smallest building in the city, and it’s hard to imagine that it housed a family.  It looks more like a playhouse for the kids.

There’s not much space for living in this house by today’s standards, but it seems to work well as a small shop.

Of course Tallinn has the requisite elaborate cathedral in its city center, and of course it was beautiful inside.Although Tallinn has Medieval roots, it also has a modern side.

We thought of Dean when we saw this.

We were greeted at Catherine’s Palace, the summer home of Catherine the Great, with several five-piece bands playing American show tunes.  Go figure!  The palace is beautiful, painted blue with white and–of course!–gold trim.  It’s also huge!  I took a 360-degree video of it.  Ted thinks if it were a track, it would be a mile around the circumference of the palace.  This is the place where our guide went missing inside and we were adopted by another group from our ship to reach the lunch venue.

The front of Catherine’s Palace has statues of Atlas holding up the pillars for the second floor of the building.  Note the two Asian girls checking how their pictures turned out and not moving aside so others can take pictures.

The Hermitage is a world-class museum in St. Petersburg.  It’s a shame that it was so overcrowded, we couldn’t do anything except move through it with the herd.  It’s one of the places we had to wear booties to protect the beautiful floor.

One of the inlaid wood floors in the Hermitage.

There was an elaborate “peacock clock” on display at the Hermitage.  Every part of it moved on the hour.  There was a video of the clock in operation so you didn’t have to be there on the hour to see it, nor would you be allowed to stop the herd to watch it if you were there.  I can’t even remember all the things that happened when the clock marked the time.  It was almost like a Rube Goldberg machine–you thought you’d seen all the action and then something else started moving.

It looks like a solid sculpture, but every part of this peacock clock moves when it chimes.

Our visit to the ballet was very enjoyable.  You can’t go wrong with a ballet in Russia.  Best of all for lukewarm ballet fans, it was Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which nearly qualifies as popular ballet.

The theater in which we saw “Swan Lake.”

The most ornate building we saw (and there were a lot of ornate buildings!) was The Sacred Church of the Spilled Blood, constructed in the Byzantine style. The entire interior, over 7,000 square meters, was Byzantine mosaics.  It took a single craftsman a year to make one square meter of a mosaic pattern.

The mosaic process begins with painting a picture in reverse.  Then the tiles are laid over the painting to reproduce it with the underside of the tile facing upward so that the picture is still in reverse.  When that job is finished, a piece of wall paneling is attached to the back side of the tiles.  When it dries, the original reverse painting is peeled off, the tiles are cleaned, and the mosaic is complete in its proper perspective.  Whew!

Every wall and ceiling surface in the church is covered with beautiful mosaics.  It’s a stand-up church, so it has no pews.

Catherine’s Palace was probably the largest building we saw, but Peterhof, the summer home of Peter the Great (whom we were told was not yet great when he lived there) definitely had the most gold.  It’s no wonder the peasants revolted, given what the aristocracy was spending on summer homes, etc.  The grounds included extraordinary fountains and a huge park, and extended about a half-mile to the waterfront on the Bay of Finland.   With the city center across the bay, Peter’s guests could arrive by boat, walk through the park, and have a wonderful view of the fountains and the palace as they approached.  Peter was definitely creating a home court advantage.

The original palace had only the center section–less than one-half of the current building. Peter thought he needed something greater, so he added the rest of the building, the fountains, and the park grounds.

While we were walking around in another park in the city, we saw Peter the Great and the missus.

Catherine is on her cell phone, probably checking in on Facebook rather than staying in character.

At the end of our two days in St. Petersburg, we were transported by hydrofoil across the Bay of Finland to our ship.  As we were boarding the hydrofoil, the wind picked up to a point where it was dangerous to cross the gangway.  Boarding was halted with part of our group in the craft, and part on the pier.  When the wind died down enough to board (30-45 minutes later), we got on and sailed away.  The delay caused those of us onboard (about 100 passengers) to be late for our ship’s departure and meant the ship was delayed in leaving the harbor.  Better safe than sorry, but we wonder what it cost and whom it cost in port charges for the delayed departure from the dock.

A hydrofoil like we used for crossing the Bay of Finland.

We’re glad we had the opportunity to visit the Russian city of the tsars, but are happy to return to our Western world.

St. Petersburg, the city of the tsars, is known as the “Venice of the North.”  It is built on islands at the mouth of the Neva River and has many waterways, probably similar to the Mississippi River delta, except habitable instead of swampy.  We had to go through customs to enter Russia because it is not part of the European Union.  The tour director of the ship promised a free drink to anyone who could make a Russian customs officer laugh.  She didn’t have to buy any drinks, although some of the officers (mostly the women) were “pleasant.”  I even got a smile with teeth showing from one of them.  Mostly, they try to look scary and they bring the word gulag to mind.

The first thing I noticed about St. Petersburg was how shabby it is.  There are many magnificent buildings–all from the 19th century–but there is apparently little or no money available for maintenance.  Rust, peeling paint, and missing window panes are visible on many buildings.  Where bricks are missing, some plaster-type substance is smoothed over the damage, but not necessarily painted to match the façade.  Even some of the monuments and tourist attractions (palaces, museums, etc.) are shabby on the outside, no matter how opulent the restoration has been on the inside.  I won’t even get into the buildings constructed in the 20th century under communism.  I’m not sure they would pass a safety inspection in the U.S. and I would have been hesitant to enter any of them.  Outside of the city, however, the houses and buildings looked much better.  Some were even mini McMansions (an oxymoron, I know).

In Russia, you need a visa ($200 each) to explore on your own.  With a certified tour guide, you don’t, so we opted for the two-day excursion offered by the ship.  We had the same tour guide (a Russian from St. Petersburg) both days and noticed that no matter what we saw and no matter how shabby it looked, there was something about it that made it the biggest, the best, and the most wonderful in the world.  She was obviously–and rightly–very proud of her home town and her country, but it reminded me of my GED students who made a habit of being aggressive because they lacked self-confidence.

Tour any attraction in St. Petersburg and you’ll find that you’re sharing the space with an incredible number of other people.  Occupancy limits are apparently not a big issue.  In some of the venues, we needed to put  “booties” on over our shoes to protect the beautiful inlaid wood floors (future picture coming).  There was an employee sitting in every room to make sure the line of visitors kept moving.  If the line stopped or slowed down too much, the tour guide got notice to move things along.

That doesn’t begin to describe the experience of passing through the palace, museum, or other venue.  There are so many people, that the line just fits between the ropes and it’s more like being herded through than walking through the rooms.  Don’t try to set up a photo–that’s moving too slowly.  Just snap and keep moving.  When we were in the Hermitage, one of the most famous museums in the world, there were so many people, it was difficult to even change places.  It’s possible that we only made it through the building because the entire mass of people moved as one.  It was impossible to get a good look at the displays.

We had another travel adventure in Catherine’s Palace.  (She’s the one who became Catherine the Great and the palace was her summer home.)  As we were putting on our booties, our guide moved ahead.  When we raised our heads from looking at our shoes, we couldn’t find her or the lollipop-like sign she carried above her head to identify her in the crowd.  We frantically looked around the room, didn’t see her or any recognizable group members, so forced our way through the human mass into the next room, thinking she had moved on.  We still couldn’t find her, so we approached one of the museum employees (few of whom had any knowledge of English) and gestured our problem to her.  She let us cross the forbidden floor area to check in the next room.

We still didn’t see our guide, but saw another group from our ship behind us.  Trying to reach that group was impossible, so we followed a group from an unidentified (to us) country in the ever-moving line through the entire palace.  When we went out the single exit, we sat down and waited until we saw the group from our ship emerge.  We knew the bus and the ship wouldn’t leave without us, but we were eager to see someone familiar.  The other group adopted us and their guide called our guide to tell her we were safe and would meet her at lunch, since all our groups were going to the same restaurant.  “Comfortable” is not a word we would use to describe how we felt between losing our group in the huge crowd, not understanding the language of the country, and being adopted by the other group, but as Shakespeare said, “All’s well that ends well.”

I have more to describe and beautiful pictures of Russia to post, but with the slow internet, this overview is going to have to suffice for now.

Aaarrgghh!  The wi-fi on the ship is so-o-o-o slow, I’m pretty sure that dial-up was faster.  I mean that literally.  Last night, after attending a great cover show of the Beatles’ music, I got impatient while trying to upload a picture to post on my previous blog entry, so I took a shower.  Even though I reduced the quality of the picture, it was still uploading when I finished my shower.  I know this is definitely a first-world problem–slow internet on my vacation cruising the Baltic Sea on a luxury ship in a stateroom that even has a heated bathroom floor–but the internet is an integral part of communication today, so it’s frustrating.  It’s also making it harder to keep up with my blogging while my thoughts are fresh.

Well, relaxing and enjoying the amenities of the ship is not hardship duty, so I’m off to do something non-internet related.

Note: If the air temperature is 64 degrees, and the water temperature is 68 degrees, is it really summer?

Helsinki is known as “the white city of the north.”  Like Stockholm, it is built on an archipelago and it must be built on the same kind of granite base, given that our city tour took us to the Rock Church.  The walls of this circular church are rock.  I’m not sure how the center opening came to be.  The ceiling over the sanctuary is a circular skylight.

The rock wall behind the altar goes all the way around the circular church. The white upper part of the photo is the skylight ceiling. Of course, it’s a Lutheran church.

We also visited the Jean Sibelius monument.  Sibelius was a famous Finnish composer, best known for Finlandia.  It’s not the national anthem of Finland, but it’s important to the Finns.  I think it must be like America the Beautiful for us.

In the picture below, note the Asian woman.  There are large groups of Asian tourists everywhere we go and they all take lots of pictures.  They immediately go to the center front of the site and then take a carefully posed picture of seemingly every possible combination of people in their groups.  Afterwards, they remain in place while they check each other’s pictures.  When a group finishes, there’s already another Asian group in its place, repeating the process.  This makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to take a picture of the site without including unknown Asians.  There are many derogatory comments from non-Asian tourists about this.

A sculpture of Sibelius, complete with Asian tourist.

The other part of the Sibelius monument. Very Scandinavian.

Paavo Nurmi, “the flying Finn,” is remembered in a Helsinki statue.  He won nine gold and three silver medals in his twelve events in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Olympics, and he set 22 world records.

Nurmi always practiced running naked, so the statue portrays him that way.

As we were leaving, Helsinki, we saw our (possibly) Finnish name on a store window.

Schroder–just like they pronounce our name in Missouri.

Alfred Nobel is the password in Stockholm.  He invented dynamite and that made all the difference to the city, which is basically built on a granite base.  With dynamite, it was possible to blast granite away and adjust street levels.  As a result, people didn’t have to climb stairs to reach different levels of roads.

The rock here was blasted away (with dynamite, of course), making the shoreline accessible to the city above without climbing stairs.

Stockholm is built on an archipelago larger than Indonesia, so there are a lot of bridges in the city as you travel from island to island.  We saw some interesting things on our city tour, including a parade that included marching bands.  That was fun!  ABBA (I wish I could type the backwards B) Museum is in Stockholm and continues to produce income for the group.  We saw a beautiful city on our bus tour, except for one building.  See the picture below.

This is beyond a doubt the ugliest building we saw in Stockholm.  It’s the U.S. Embassy.

On our walking tour, we passed an interesting bathroom (or toilet, as Europe calls it).  One of the men in our group tried it and said there was a stainless steel cover that, when removed, revealed a hole for use.

The toilet and the brave (desperate?) man who tried it.

Some of the buildings we walked past had “gossip mirrors.”  The mirror allowed the person on the second (or higher) floor to see a person at the building entrance.  When the doorbell rang on the first floor, the gossip mirror made it possible to decide whether you wanted to answer the door or not.

The black triangular thing mounted on the building beside the window and above the white sign is the gossip mirror.

We went into a small bakery and bought a sweet roll just so we could take a picture of the original painted ceiling.  I can’t even imagine a ceiling like this now.

We could see from the open doorway that the ceiling was beautiful.

Eating a sweet roll was no hardship to get a good look at this ceiling artwork.

Our transfer from the Paris hotel to the airport insisted that we had to be picked up four hours before our departure time, so we were up at 4:45 a.m.  Yippee!  Best of all, we had two hours to kill at the airport, waiting for our flight time–time that I would have preferred to spend sleeping prior to the pickup.  Oh well, as the French say, c’est la vie.

The ride to the airport was weird.  The driver was grumpy (probably because he had to get up so early, like us) and began our acquaintance by arguing with another driver in front of the hotel about a parking spot.  It didn’t get better.

It was still dark outside when, without a word to us, the driver parked the van with the engine running, got out, and walked around, apparently looking for a street sign.  Even Ted and I could tell we were driving in circles, and this wasn’t a nice neighborhood.  I kept telling myself that our travel agent absolutely would not book us with an unreliable service, but I was mentally questioning whether or not my purse would be an effective weapon.  The driver got back in the van (thank heavens!) and we continued to meander around.  We stopped at the entrance to an alley and, again, the driver got out without a word, left the engine running, and then disappeared down the alley.  A few minutes later, he reappeared with three women.

This happened once more, except that by the third time, it was getting light, so it was slightly less scary.  Ted and I were less worried, but the three women wondered what was going on.  We told them what had already happened and the five of us decided there might be one more pickup.  Sure enough, the driver returned with two more passengers.  After that, it was a daylight trip the rest of the way to the airport.

The adventure wasn’t over.  When we arrived in Stockholm, we found the cruise representative and learned that our name had erroneously been omitted from the pickup list.  The lady told us not to worry, that we’d straighten it out onboard.  She put us in a nicer car with a much nicer driver than we had in Paris and we went directly to the ship where we were greeted with a glass of champagne and our stateroom key cards.

Our stateroom is a deluxe veranda with outdoor seating, complimentary mini bar, complimentary laundry, complimentary room service for meals, etc., etc.  The ship’s maiden voyage was in early April, so everything is brand new and beautiful.  Of course, the cruise crew lives to meet our every need before we know we need it, so life is very, very good.

That’s us on the ship with Stockholm in the background. Hey! It’s sunny for a change! And we’re only wearing light jackets instead of warmer ones.

Our stateroom. The veranda with two chairs and a table is “behind” the foreground of the picture; sofa and easy chair on the left; dresser and desk on the right; bathroom behind the wooden wall beside the bed; double closet across from the bathroom. It’s longer than and about as wide as our family room with an outdoor porch.

Here’s a quick rundown on some of our highlights in Paris.

It’s Paris.  What else really needs to be said?  But still, . . .

The main traffic law seems to be “the bravest driver wins.”  Pedestrians trump traffic.  If you even look like you want to cross a street without a traffic light, the vehicles will stop for you.  Having said that, if you’re at an intersection with a traffic light and have not crossed the street before the light changes, you will hear a chorus of horn honking.  Horns also honk loudly for anything–people or vehicles–that require use of the brake.  Motorcycles weave in and out of the traffic, driving between lanes and going to the front of the line at the red light.

It’s so much fun to talk with people.  At the Bastille Day parade, the lady standing beside us said, “Since you’re wearing Eddie Bauer jackets, I assume you’re from the States.”  She was from Arizona.  At the fireworks, we stood next to a family from Ohio.  We met Felix, a Frenchman born in and still living in Paris, at a cafe and chatted with him for about a half hour.  At our Eiffel Tower dinner, we sat with a couple from Australia and another couple from Brazil.

No matter where we were, any food I saw in Paris looked delicious.  In England, everything looked washed out and sometimes grayish.  We even had pale carrots in England, not to mention a horrible pepperoni pizza–and it’s hard to ruin a pizza.  We’ve tried a number of new foods in Paris and they’ve all been delicious.  The French seem to deserve their reputation for good food.  We ordered organic omelettes (they’re French, after all) with fresh raspberries and strawberries on the side.  It took awhile to come, so we thought they must have waited for the hens to lay the eggs and then picked the berries while we ate the omelettes–and maybe they did.  Those were the best omelettes and berries we’ve ever had!  A little corner cafe offered boeuf bourguignon, Julia Child’s signature dish, so we had to try it.  In the U.S., it would be called beef stew, but the wine sauce made it so very French.  Mmm-mmm good!

The candy in the second row from the right is decorated with edible gold. We bought a few pieces of another kind of candy and agreed it was the best chocolate we’ve ever had.

In addition to the  police escort to our hotel after the Bastille Day parade, we also saw some criminals.  We were going through security at the Eiffel Tower when about ten guys (we heard they were pickpockets) came running through the crowd, followed by several running policemen chasing them.  One of the guys bumped against Ted’s arm as he ran past our group.  We’d been warned about pickpockets, and keep our possessions well protected, but we didn’t expect to actually see real, live criminals.  We were on a streak:  the following day, we had to wait to cross the street while marchers demonstrating for racial equality in Paris passed by.

I saw a double-decker, open-top tour bus that advertised “Slididing top.  Never cold or wet.”  Yes, the top apparently slidides.

After our Eiffel Tower dinner and our Seine River cruise, we took a moped-type topless carriage back to the hotel.  I wish I’d taken a picture of it.  There was just enough room for the driver in front and the two of us in back.  The back of our seat was trimmed in blue tinsel with flickering blue twinkle lights coloring it.  The driver asked if we wanted music for the ride.  We said “yes.”  He asked what we like.  I said “Elvis.”  I was kidding.  The driver was not.  He must have used something like Pandora, because the open-top vehicle blasted “Jailhouse Rock” and a few other Elvis songs for all to hear on our short trip back to our Paris home.

Written on the surface of the “first floor” (58 meters up) of the Eiffel Tower.

I haven’t had time to write about some of the special things we did in Paris.

Our dinner in the Eiffel Tower was a romantic night out, with the added excitement of the pickpocket chase and the follow-up of a sunset cruise on the Seine.  When we looked out at Paris from the Eiffel Tower, my first words were “It’s a white city!”  In honor of the Bastille Day holiday, the Tower was lit in red, white, and blue–the colors of the French flag.

One view of Paris from the Eiffel Tower.

View of the Museum d’ Orsay from our Seine River cruise.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Late sunsets this far north put the Bastille Day fireworks show at 11:00 pm.  There was a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower from the Tuilleries, and the park was across the street from our hotel, so we walked over and joined thousands of others to watch the display.  Since the Eiffel Tower’s design uses the structural components as its form, it’s possible to shoot fireworks out of the Tower.  To begin the show, the entire Tower twinkled with light.  It was like the magic of Disneyland.  Then, in addition to the typical fireworks in the sky, some were shot in succession out of the sides of the Tower from the top down, while others swirled around the Tower.  Lighting would change the color of the Tower, sometimes in bands of different colors.  It was really beautiful and different from any other display we’ve seen.

The shadow on the left is a statue and looks like the guy is watching the fireworks.  Just ahead of him, you might be able to see the Eiffel Tower through the fireworks.

One evening, as we walked in the Tuilleries along the Seine, we heard the sound of bagpipes–reminiscent of our recent time in Scotland.  We looked around to find the piper and saw him standing on a bridge, wearing the kilt, and piping his Scottish heart out.

A wee bit o’ Scotland in Paris.

Au revoir, Paris.  We’ll definitely be back to see more of you.

It was always a given that we would visit the Louvre while we were in Paris.  The Louvre was once the king’s palace, and it’s impossible to describe how large the building is.  Part of one floor is for administration and most of one wing is an art school.  We had a three-hour private tour (one other couple and us) of the Louvre and, even excluding the offices and the school, we couldn’t describe three hours as a good start.  It was more like we made it through the door.  The guide said there are 30 km of exhibition halls–about five miles–and there are more articles in storage than on display.  We saw mostly major works of art as our introduction to the exhibits in the Louvre.  The building itself is impressive, and it gave me a little quiver to know that I was looking at the original Mona Lisa and the original Venus de Milo in the Louvre.  We’ve been in other art museums, but the Louvre is the Mecca of art museums, and it was thrilling to be there.

Check out the ceiling. It’s one of the zillion beautiful ceilings in the Louvre.

This is one of the rooms in a Louvre exhibit that replicates Napoleon’s apartment at Versailles.

This is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Apollo.”  The guide told us people are calling it “Apollo Taking a Selfie.”

The Louvre was the king’s palace and the Tuilleries (twee’-ler-eez), across the street, was the king’s park.  The park is about 1.5 miles long and borders the Seine.  There’s a section with carnival rides for kids (probably not there during the king’s residence), there are lakes and gardens, and there are lots of trees and walking paths, complete with a plethora of chairs and benches.  Many people joined us in relaxing in the Tuilleries.

One of the lakes and gardens in the Tuilleries.

Here’s a Thom and Katie-style foot shot to show how relaxed we are sitting at the Round Basin in the Tuilleries, just like the people you can barely see on the other side of the basin.

. . . the Arc de Triomphe.  We got hungry.

The Arc de Triomphe was a hefty hike from our Paris hotel, so we set out, subway passes in hand, to figure out the subway system and manage a transfer to reach the Arc and look down the Champs Elysees (shahm l-e-z’).  By the time we walked to the Metro stop we thought would be best and figured out which zone we were in and which one we were heading to, not to mention how to validate the subway pass, we decided to go to a cafe and have lunch before making the excursion to the Arc.

It was in the cafe that we met Felix, a native Parisian, and became involved in a lengthy conversation with him about Paris and other things.  The Paris Opera House was across the street from the cafe and there was a Metro stop in front of it, so we headed over.  It was unexpectedly impossible to cross the street to the Opera House because hundreds of bicyclists riding yellow bikes and wearing yellow shirts stopped the traffic and circled the area.  No one in the crowd seemed to know what was going on except that the Tour de France was a long way south, so this was something else.  Scandinavian flags were evident among the group, but the rest is a mystery.

Bicyclists!

When we made it across the street, we noticed tourist-type people on the balcony of the Paris Opera House and decided to see if we could go in to see the inside.  (That’s the Opera House in the picture above and you can see the people on the balcony.)  For seven euros, the answer was “yes,” so we bought tickets.  What a fortunate decision for us.  The Paris Opera House is considered the most beautiful in the world.  It’s huge and magnificent.  We were able to walk around on three levels and every new view seemed more beautiful than what we’d already seen.  The last performance of the season was scheduled that evening, and it was sold out or I think we’d have bought tickets.  Attending a performance of either an opera or a ballet (they do both and can produce two shows simultaneously) will determine the timing of our next visit.  We don’t even care if we like the show (although it will most likely be excellent)–we just want to see/hear a performance in that wonderful building.  Note:  We’ll also have to see the Arc de Triomphe next time.

While looking at the displays in the Opera House, we saw Gene Kelly on a video.  Reading the information and watching the video, we learned that American dance is a distinctive and respected art form, combining the modern with the traditional and influencing the way ballet is now performed throughout the world.  Gene Kelly, in fact, was a leader in developing modern dance and directed ballet performances in the Paris Opera House.  We had no idea that American dance had such an influence on the art.

The grand staircase in the opera house.

One of the many hallways in the opera house.

Let the performance begin! (Can you see the guy cleaning the stage floor?)

We returned to our hotel too late to blog about our first day in Paris yesterday, but I’ll catch up on that later.  Today is Bastille Day, a national holiday.  Museums and other buildings are closed or have limited access because of the holiday, so we’ve worked our sightseeing plans around that.

We went to the Bastille Day parade this morning.  The parade route was just two blocks from our hotel, so we didn’t have to fight traffic.  We did, however, have a surprise when we left the hotel.  There were policemen at the corner who would not let us walk on the street to the parade route.  We had to go another way, which was three blocks instead.  All along the three-block walk and along the parade route, there was a heavy police presence.  I counted 25-30 police personnel at the intersection where we watched the parade.  People were allowed to stand at the intersection, but not all the way along the street.

It was a military parade that began with a flyover of jets with red, white, and blue “smoke” trailing behind them.  Then I think every version of French military plane flew over in groups of three or four planes.  Following the “air show” (nothing showy like our air shows–just a flyover), we watched units from every possible military division march by.  I was surprised they all used a vocal cadence instead of a drum.  There was only one band, and that was near the end.  (Probably in order of importance–the band carried musical instruments, not weapons.)  Women always marched at the end of the unit.  Hmmm.  After the marchers, came the tanks, and finally, the helicopters overhead.

We walked back to our hotel, but were not allowed to enter the street on which the hotel is located without showing our key cards at every intersection.  When we arrived at the final block, one of the policemen at the corner escorted us the half block to the hotel door.  Neither of us has ever had a police escort before!  We think all the security is due to fear of terrorism on a national holiday.  In my opinion, with all the military presence and all those weapons concentrated in this area, a terrorist would be pretty stupid to strike, but nobody asked for my opinion.

Now we’re off to continue celebrating the holiday with some sightseeing and (if the 40 percent chance of rain doesn’t happen) to attend a free concert and fireworks at the Eiffel Tower this evening.

More on Paris later, including some pictures of the parade after I download them.

Note:  Security near our hotel was probably very strict because President Hollande was viewing the parade from the stands less than two blocks away.

We took the EuroStar train from London to Paris, and it was awesome!  It took two hours and 15 minutes to make the trip at speeds of 200-300 km/hr.  There were two tunnels that were 35 meters below the English Channel bottom and each was about 25 miles long.  All the necessities were included with our seats:  USB outlets, electrical outlets, headphone outlets, vanity mirror, laptop storage groove beside the seat, adjustable footrest, reading light, pocket for holding small items, overhead and underseat storage, and reclining seats that did not invade the space of the passengers behind us–there was that much leg room.

We had a full meal served to us in our seats.  There was also a snack/dining car, but the delivered-to-our-seat meal was included in the ticket price and the dining car was not.  I had some kind of quiche with a dinner roll, a salad, a beverage, a raspberry tart for dessert, and a piece of chocolate to finish it off.  Not to mention beverage service that included wine, of course.

EuroStar seat amenities: vanity mirror at the top; pocket for small items; tray for food, laptop, etc.; and drink holder.

European-style drink holder. Only bottles fit the opening.  The USB port is below the bottle and the cover over the electric outlet is below that.

The next wonderful surprise was our hotel.  We have a small suite with a seating area, sleeping area, and bath.  There’s an amazing amount of storage space, so we unpacked four days’ worth of stuff and put everything out of sight.  We haven’t had window screens anywhere we’ve been, so there must be a shortage of bugs in Europe.  An added amenity in this hotel is the electrical blinds outside each window (hotel windows open in Europe) so we can open the windows and still have some privacy.  BTW, you pronounce privacy with a short “i” if you’re British.  I don’t think we’ve ever been in such a clean hotel room–spotless and probably dust-mote free as well–and it’s a great place to hang out.  What a shame that we want to see Paris more than we want to hang out in our room.  If it had a little kitchen, it would be a nice one-bedroom apartment.

Seating area in our hotel room.

Our hotel “bedroom” with a media island separating it from the seating area.

Very European bathroom off the bedroom. The bidet is behind the half wall.

After we settled in, we spent our first hours in Paris walking to the Louvre and strolling through the Tuilleries after dinner.  Life is good!

Today, our last day in Britain, included a visit to Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace and home of Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway.  It was yet another fulfillment of an English major’s dream to walk in the same village in which Shakespeare walked.  Having seen a Shakespearean play in the New Globe Theatre in London and having walked in Shakespeare’s home town, I can leave England with joy in my heart.

A wooden carving of Shakespeare. The split in his head indicates his dilemma to be, or not to be. (Really! That’s what the plaque said!)

Really scary Shakespeare! I’m not sure who buys this poster.

Fun with Shakespeare.

It was bittersweet to say good-bye to so many new friends with whom we’ve spent the past twelve days.  Some we might see again if we visit the areas in which they live; most we will not.

Our travel group in front of Anne Hathaway’s house.

It’s been a wonderful tour of Britain and I can now clarify some terminology:  The single country is England; the island is Great Britain and includes England, Scotland, and Wales; and the United Kingdom includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Tomorrow we will board the train in London and will travel beneath the English Channel to Paris.

The history we are learning on this trip is so interesting.  I’ve heard it all before, but being in the places it happened makes it more real:  Mary, Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Battle of Culloden, the MacDonalds vs. the Campbells, and now, as we leave Scotland and return to England, Hadrian’s Wall.

Hadrian’s Wall marks the northern edge of the Roman Empire in England.  It’s just south of the Scottish border.  Parts of it are still visible, and there is a 118-mile trail that people walk across England to follow the wall.  While we were taking pictures of the wall, I heard an Australian woman from our group sarcastically say that she’s going to send her picture to Trump to show him how build a wall.  (We still haven’t met a non-American who likes Trump.)

Some of the remains of Hadrian’s Wall.

We had lunch at the Robin Hood Pub, a small, rural establishment.  The authenticity of the pub was charming.  We had soup and sandwiches with locally brewed beer (or other beverages) and good company.

The Robin Hood Pub.  Robyn (not Hood), one of our new friends from Australia, is sitting to the right of the fireplace.

As we drove along the shores of the North Sea, we saw a unique place–a small community of about 40 people who live on an island or on a causeway, depending on whether it is high tide or low tide.  In the picture below, it is low tide, so the causeway to the community is visible.  Visitors are regularly rescued because they try to beat the tide to the community, but it swirls around behind them and traps them in water and mud.

The community is built on the “lump” on the right of the strip of land.

We finished our day in Jorvik, the Nordic name for York, a market city.  The walls of the city and the four city gates (one facing each compass direction) are still standing.  The streets are exactly wide enough to accommodate a carriage.  The gutters along the old butchers’ street allowed the blood from slaughtering to flow away.  The former butcher shops also have hooks above their doors and windows from which butchers used to hang the slaughtered animals that were for sale.  Thankfully, that’s no longer done today.

There are lots of low, narrow passageways that go between streets, and a huge cathedral to show the power of the market city.  (In medieval times, the size of the cathedral was indicative of the strength of the city.)  Unfortunately, the York cathedral is missing many of its stone statues.  The statues were symbolic of the Catholic faith and were destroyed when Henry VIII declared England a Protestant country and ordered the removal of all evidence of Catholicism.

One of the carriage-wide streets.  Notice how two or three people might have difficulty walking side-by-side in the street.

Part of the front of the York cathedral. You can see where the stone statues used to be.

Edinburgh is built on an old volcano which was reduced to half its size due to erosion from glaciers during the Ice Age.  The city is built on seven levels.  It’s hard to notice unless you’re on a street or bridge that allows you to look down to another level.

The Edinburgh Castle.

Interesting things unique to Edinburgh include the Elephant House–the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.  She was a single mom at the time and spent her days writing at the café because it meant she could save money by not heating her flat.  Saving money isn’t her problem any more, and the people who allowed her to spend her days at the café are also doing well from the tourist business.

Where J. K. Rowling did her best writing.

Near the Elephant House is another restaurant with a lifelike sculpture of a little dog named Wee Bobby.  Wee Bobby’s owner always ate at the restaurant.  When his owner died, Wee Bobby sat on his owner’s grave every day until the one o’clock cannon was shot.  Then Wee Bobby would go to the restaurant, where the owners continued to feed him until he died.

Speaking of the one o’clock cannon, it is shot from the castle every day except Sunday to mark the time in Edinburgh.  Our castle guide told us that most cities mark the time at noon, but the Scots know it’s more economical to mark the time at one than at twelve.  Truth or legend, you decide. 

Information about the One O’clock Gun.

English major highlight:  Edinburgh has a 200-foot-high monument to Sir Walter Scott.  It’s the tallest monument in the world to an author.

Sir Walter. Probably trying to compose a new poem.

It’s been fun to see Scottish men wearing the kilt (the kilt, not a kilt).  The tour guides wear them and so do the street performing pipers, but we also see “regular” men wearing them.  It definitely makes you wonder if what they say they wear under them is really what they wear under them! ?

Our Edinburgh visit ended with a Scottish party at a five-star restaurant.  We had a delicious dinner followed by a wonderful after-dinner show featuring Scottish songs and dances.  The haggis was delicious.  Really!  I also liked the turnip/potato mash served with the haggis.

This is the piper who piped us in to dinner.  I like the sound of the bagpipes.

Today we went to the birthplace of golf at the Old Course at St. Andrews.  The golf course is right on the North Sea and–can you believe it?!–we had the best weather of our trip so far!  The sun was shining, the breeze was warm, and the temperatures were well into the 70s.  It felt as if it were summer, and we were even able to take off our jackets.  The North Sea beach in front of the golf course is the setting used in Chariots of Fire.  It looked just as it did in the movie.

We’re not interested in golf, so we walked around the city instead.  The highlight of my day was finding an awesome bookstore without even looking for one!  The sidewalk sign announced “a haven for bibliophiles” and that was an irresistible invitation for me.  What a store!  They have “over 45,000 books” jammed together from floor to ceiling and sliding library ladders to roll along the shelves to reach the high books.  I bought a book.  Shocking, I know.

Our other destination today was Edinburgh.  We had time to wander around the city for awhile and will be going back tomorrow for city and castle tours.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if it were sunny and warm two days in a row?

Ted at the North Sea shore.

Me in the awesome bookstore.  Do you see the sliding library ladders?

When I was in grade school, I read a book in which the heroine went to the Isle of Skye.  I don’t remember anything else about the story except that she wondered if she was “in Skye” or “on Skye.”  Today we went to Skye, so I asked a resident which was correct.  He told me that he’s always said “on Skye.”  At last my mind is at ease about that question.

We visited a beautiful garden on Skye.  It reminded me of the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island.  In addition, it had huge western red cedar trees (noted on a sign as native to the U.S.) that reminded me of those we saw in Mt. Rainier Park with Thom & Co. on one of our visits.

Also located on Skye is Eilean Donan Castle.  James Bond and M went to this castle in Goldfinger.  Sean Connery went again with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment.  As we were leaving the castle grounds we saw our first “no drones” sign.  Cool!

We spent most of the day driving through the Highlands again and made a stop at Loch Ness.  None of us spotted the Loch Ness monster, but we had a chance to enjoy the pretty Scottish Highlands scenery and to eat a nice lunch in the Loch Ness restaurant.  The sun even came out for a few hours!

This is just one of many beautiful views of the Scottish Highlands.  Like all beautiful things, a picture does not equal the real thing.  We saw heather growing everywhere and wish we could be here when it blooms and turns the mountains purple.  It was cool (we wore layers of jackets) with rain, fog, and heavy clouds all day, which is typical here, but I can’t help imagining that this might have been even more gorgeous in the sunshine.  Still, when you think of the Highlands, you think of the Highland mists, right?

Here we are in Glen Coe (glen = valley), also called the Valley of Weeping because it is the site of the largest Scottish tribal massacre in history.  The MacDonalds offered hospitality to the Campbells on a stormy winter night and the Campbells murdered 80 MacDonalds while they slept.  Those who escaped froze to death in the Highland cold and snow.  The mountains behind us are the Three Sisters.

We took a boat ride around Loch (= Lake) Lomond this morning.  The song with the line “You take the high road and I’ll take the low” was written about Loch Lomond.  Rob Roy, a Scottish outlaw, folk hero, and the Robin Hood of Scotland had a cave hideout on Loch Lomond.  The cave opening isn’t much larger than a doorway, so “CAVE” is painted on the rock to help visitors find it.  (It’s to the left of CAVE between the two rock outcroppings.)

We saw these flowers while we were walking around the village tonight.  There were yellow and white ones too.  As a non-gardener, I have no idea what they are, but I enjoyed the sight.

At Windemere (not Lake Windemere, because “Windemere” means “windy lake”), there was a steam-powered train to take visitors to the sightseeing boats on the lake.  The train zips along at a dazzling 4 mph!  Note:  Beatrix Potter lives on the north shore of Windemere.

The soil must be horrible in the Scottish Highlands because everywhere you look, there are stone fences and stone buildings.  You’d only use that much stone if it were plentiful.  It made me want to stick a spade into the ground just to find out if there’s any topsoil at all.

William Wordsworth, one of the Romantic poets, is buried in Grasmere, in the Lake District.  This is his family plot in the cemetery.  The poet’s headstone is third from the right.  This was another English major’s highlight on our trip.

This statue of the Duke of Wellington stands in Glasgow.  People keep putting a traffic cone on its head and it was costing the city too much to keep removing it, so they decided to let it be.  I’m not sure what opinion this expresses about the Duke.

The English love their pets.  During World War II, England didn’t have enough food for its people.  As a result, many pets had to be put down because they couldn’t be fed.  After the war, people could have pets again and they were so excited about it that, for a period of time, there were more choices of pet food than human food in the stores.

When people find out that we are from the U.S., the first thing they ask us about is Trump.  They want to know who is voting for him and they can’t believe there’s a chance he will become our President.  So far, none of the people we’ve met wants Trump to lead our country.

There are three million people and nine million sheep in Wales.

At a roadside stop we saw a trash can with a serious, regulation, printed sign above it.  The sign said “Please take your litter home.”

Today we bought ourselves a cinnamon roll and a long john for a snack at a coffee shop.  In Wales, they are a Chelsea bun and Swiss bun respectively.

One of our hotel rooms had a sign above the light switch at the door.  It said “This room is not afraid of the dark.  Please conserve energy and turn off the lights when you leave.”